Welcome the Hour of Conflict: William Cowan McClellan and the 9th Alabama

6
The Peninsula Campaign and the Seven
Days Battles
March 25–July 27, 1862

. . . as long as there is a Soldier left on Southern Soil let him strike
for freedom in the face of death . . .

—William Cowan McClellan

Athens, Alabama, was sacked by Col. John Basil Turchin’s Eighth Brigade on
May 2, 1862, with many households and buildings being burnt or plundered. The Union troops under his command were allowed to pillage the
town for two hours, possibly in retaliation for recent attacks by citizens and
guerrilla units on Union troops and trains. (By the end of July 1862, both
Colonel Turchin and his commanding officer, Brig. Gen. Ormsby MacKnight
Mitchel, faced court-martial charges for the actions of their troops in Athens.) Although other war-related incidents took place in Athens and Huntsville both before and after Turchin’s raid and the region experienced Union
raids and occupation throughout the rest of the war, this one event greatly
angered the Limestone County troops away in Northern Virginia. Despite
the Confederate victories in Virginia, the invasion of their homeland caused
anxiety and a loss of morale among the Limestone County troops. William
longed to go back to Alabama to deal with the invasion himself, although
the McClellan home went unscathed, possibly because it was located several
miles outside of Athens.

Along with Gen. Joseph E. Johnston’s army, the 9th Alabama moved to
the Virginia Peninsula in April, and Companies F and D went on picket
duty along the Warwick River. While on picket duty at Warwick, William
Cowan McClellan would come under fire for the first time, with bullets
piercing his clothing. He would see action again during the Battle of Seven
Pines at the close of the Peninsula Campaign in May, and later during the
Seven Days Battles in June and July, when the 9th would be in the thick of
the fighting at Gaines’s Mill and Frayser’s Farm. William had waited eight
months for his first taste of battle, but soon he began to wonder if the war
would ever end.

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